lities. Russia is consistent with its national idea. It pours forth
its legions and moves to its work with a terrible consistency. And if
we--also a great people, having great power--are equally consistent, we
shall fall back upon no selfish conservatism, but aid whatever tends to
fulfil the Providential purpose of our existence, and whatever helps and
advances man.

One thing is certain. So long as any nation truly lives, it unfolds its
specific idea and lives according to its original type. When it fails to
do this, the sentence of decay is already written upon it. If it fails
to illustrate God's purpose in its obedience, it illustrates His control
in retribution. For there is nothing supreme, nothing finally
triumphant, nothing of the last importance, but His Law. It penetrates,
and oversweeps, and survives all charters and institutions and
nationalities, like the infinite space that encompasses Alps and Andes,
and planets and systems. It is this that successive generations
illustrate. It is this that all history vindicates. If a nation runs
parallel to this Divine Law, it is well; if false to its purpose and its
control, down it goes. The prophet Isaiah, in one of the most terrific
and sublime passages of the Bible, represents the king of Babylon, while
passing into the under-world, saluted by departed rulers, by dead kings,
rising from their shadowy thrones, and exclaiming, "Art thou become weak
as we? Art thou become like unto us?" Thus has many a nation gone down
to its doom. Shall it be so with this Republic, because false to its
ideal? Shall it descend to the shades of perished pomp and greatness,
and see Nineveh with dusty, hieroglyphic robes rising up to meet it; and
Persia, with the empty wine-cup of its luxury; and Rome, with the shadow
of universal empire on its discrowned head; and hear them say--"Art thou
become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us?"

My friends, I look at the eager enterprise, the young, hopeful vigor,
the tides of possibility that flow through this great city; I look at
the symbols of this Republic; and I cannot believe that such is to be
the result. I look back upon our history, and cannot argue such a future
from such a past. A great light lay upon the wake of those frail ships
that bore our fathers hither; the wake of past ages, the following of
good men's prayers and brave men's deeds, the mingling currents of
martyr-blood and prophet-fire. And methinks, as they struck the shor